of which mind and body are attributes, and individual beings are particular modes. Substance is everything that there is. It is infinite and encompasses both God and nature. God is not separate from nature anymore than is the human mind (or soul) from God. There are no distinct realms of Heaven or Hell—and correspondingly, no after-life. Human virtue rests in a conformity with God’s nature—not through obedience to his will (as revealed, e.g., in theological dogma) but by thinking through the conundrum of rationality as existing in-the-world. This is the basis of Spinoza’s Pantheistic effort to place both meaning and its justification within a single context of existence.
The attainment of truth (and virtue), in this context, entails a self-examination. Non-conformity (with God’s nature) is not disobedience (sin)—but a privation (isolation, degradation) of potential. As humans share the aspects of thought and extension with the universe, virtue lies in a grasp (and joining with) nature’s complexity through an increasingly adequate understanding of both self and the universe as constituting the infinite idea of God. This is a theology of “immersion.” The human is an aspect of God—neither a creation nor a servant. Nature is not evidenced as primordial chaos but as timeless and totalizing geometry—and is therefore (progressively) knowable. As mind, universe, and God have (are) the same nature, there is no dualism lurking in the cognition of reality—only the task of (cognitive and affective) communion.
Leibniz, who knew and engaged with Spinoza, conceives of reality as an aggregate of distinct entities —which he calls “monads,” and characterizes them as depending, for their interaction, on a separate and transcendent God. Monads are given actuality through the union with their physical bodies, and they gain their reality through their place in the divine schema—the “pre-established harmony” through which God structures the correspondences—the physical interchange —between monads. Humans are a complex type of monad which are distinguished from the simpler types by having the capacity for thought and self-consciousness. They also have the idea of free-will.
But this conjoining of human will with divine perfection seems to contradict Leibniz’ thesis of God’s master-plan—the strict determinism that it apparently entails. For how could a universal pre-established harmony exist if humans were free to do as they would (often perversely) wish? Is “freedom,” then, defined by the (restrictive—but hidden) logical (God —given) nature of its possibility?
Leibniz here resorts to a somewhat counter-intuitive solution: God gives humans the illusion of being free, but through His infinite knowledge, all human actions are (pre- and post-facto) designed to be in acccordance with His dictate. This provokes the infamous thesis (Voltaire made such fun of it) that our world is the “best of all possible worlds.” In this (best) world, despite its deistic regimentation, humans experience themselves as having free will, and so take the indignities of life as being a necessary part of living free—however unjust the experiences of that life.
In this sense, Leibniz’ philosophy, in contrast to Spinoza’s, is dualistic—a world composed of monads of varying complexity, whose nature and future depend entirely on the will of a separate, yet all-powerful God—but whose sense of life is that of self-determination.
Spinoza rejects the traditional trappings of an afterlife—of heaven and hell, sin, reward and punishment—in favor of a single Universe (the soul as a rivulet slipping back into the ocean) that includes God as an ideal of completeness, but whose location is within—not outside—the realm of nature. In Spinoza’s words: “Deus Sive Natura.” Where God is positioned, in this context, depends (as a friend once said to me) on what one wants from God.
Curiously, Leibniz’ response to Spinoza’s single-realm inclusiveness, is that the universe so construed, would give humans no choice at all, neither in thought nor action—for they would be subject—as are animals and stones—to the single-mindless (soul-less) determinism of nature. The (separate) Divine Will “just is” the source of human freedom—for that is where it originates. More: If God did not exist in His three perfections—omniscience, omnipotence, omni-benevolence—nothing imperfect (read: human) could exist.
For Leibniz, the divine plan issues from God’s omni-benevolence, and so rationally “encloses” the amorality of natural freedom. Spinoza’s God, in contrast, as He is “within” nature, becomes the impetus for the (developmental) unification of morality and natural freedom—without the imposition of a transcendent “Will.” This impetus marks Spinoza’s essential philosophic value of a transcendental (immanent, rational, and all-inclusive) benevolence. It has no place for Leibniz’s transcendent (imposed and other-worldly) benevolence—given by a separate God.
There are always good reasons for devising a system that identifies what we need to know—with what, and how, we can know. Such systems are rare, but when successful, they are like ecumenical cathedrals in which—sorted out and variously assigned—are contained the needs, doubts, and resolutions that press on the lateness of their time—and so, present a new understanding.
Immanuel Kant’s “critical philosophy” is one such—the philosophical masterwork of his (and, as I believe, our own) time.
When Kant began rebuilding the house he had inherited, it was clear that its outworn and overargued elements must be separated, refurbished, and added to. Only then could they be made to cogently address the bases of reality, experience, and the needs—possibilities and limitations—of thought.
But Kant, interested less in housekeeping than in categories, offers a new schema which critically addresses the inherited array of intractables and incorrigibles, and so offers a system of both analysis and synthesis that would replace them.
This system is expansive —not reductive. It does not delete one member of an apparently opposing pair so as to hegemonize the other. Rather, it shows that the opposing claims—to both reification and explanation—are directed at different targets, and have different compliants in mind. The duality, once resolved, could then become—first a duet, then an oratorio. (Kant’s “Critique” and Bach’s “St. Matthew’s Passion” are close in historical time).
Kant offers a system of reciprocal units which provide answers to his four basic philosophical questions: What is there? How can we know? What must we do? For what can we hope?
The first question is directed at our understanding of the world—the realm of what was once called meta-physics but is now called ontology, and is addressed through the empirical sciences; the second is directed to the nature of that understanding—what was once called revelation is now epistemology, and is taken up by cognitive science and psychology; the third pertains to our desires and actions—the continuing realm of ethics and morality—which is codified in theology, philosophy, and law; the fourth question is more speculative—for it is about beauty and sublimity, art and teleology—and asks whether there is a material basis for appreciating the world-as-rational, and how it instantiates our hopes for progress.
I simplify all this greatly—when the question veers, Kant weaves between the critiques; when it threatens to disappear, he provides new rainment and a differerent home—the argument is nothing if not complex—as is the world it presents.
The aspect of Kant’s philosophy that here concerns me most is the question “for what can we hope, ” which is taken up in his third critique—of “Judgment.” This is where the concept of the “reflective”—as opposed to the “determinate”—judgment appears. Versions of the determinate judgment operate in the earlier critiques—as empirical (scientific) judgment in the first , and as moral (categorical) judgment in the second.
But it is in the third critique that Kant takes up the reflective judgment—primarily, in the apprehension of beauty, secondarily, in the appreciation and creation of art—and finally, as a sensory sign of the world’s evolution towards
